To:P. P. MALINOVSKY[1]

Written:Written between May 1 and 13, 1918Published:First published on April 20, 1963, in the newspaperSovetskaya Kultura, No. 49.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1975,

      Moscow,Volume 44,

      pages82c-83a.Translated:Clemens DuttTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Whyis it that, contrary to the decision of the C.P.C.
and in spite of unemployment (and in spite of May Day),

workhas not been begun in Moscow

1)onaproperremoval of tsarist monuments?

2)onthe removal of tsarist eagles?

3)onpreparinghundredsof inscriptions (revolutionary
and socialist) onallpublic buildings?

4)onsetting upbusts(if only temporary ones) of
various great revolutionaries?

[1]Leninwrote this letter to P. P. Malinovsky, Acting People’s
Commissar for the Properties of the Republic, in connection with
the implementation of the decree of the Council of People’s
Commissars “On the Monuments of the Republic”, adopted on April
12, 1918, =

and published on April 14 inPravdaandIzvestia. The
decree set the task of removing monuments to the tsars and their
servants that were of no historical or artistic value, and of
erecting revolutionary monuments. A special commission, consisting
of the People’s Commissar for Education, the People’s Commissar
for the Properties of the Republic and the head of the Fine Arts
Department of the People’s Commissariat for Education, was
instructed to determine which monuments in Moscow and
Petrograd were to be removed, and advised to enlist the services of
artists in designing new, revolutionary monuments. The Council
of People’s Commissars proposed that by May 1 the commission
should have removed the ugliest monuments and submitted the
first models of new monuments, and should also hasten
arrangements for replacing old inscriptions, emblems and street names
by new ones reflecting the ideas and sentiments of revolutionary
Russia.

Leninattached great importance to the implementation of
this decree, the progress of which was discussed at the sittings
of the Council of People’s Commissars on July 8, 17 and 30, 1918.
Lenin repeatedly criticised the heads of the People’s
Commissariats for Education and for the Properties of the Republic, and
the heads of the Moscow Soviet, for the unsatisfactory
implementation of the decree (see this volume, Document 109, and present
edition, Vol. 35, documents 171 and 176, pp. 360, 368).